Peter Pan’s Middle School Assembly D.A.R.E. Speech

I first started taking fairy dust because I felt myself getting tired at work, couldn’t work those long hours anymore. God, in the beginning it seemed like the perfect solution, one minute I am old Pete, exhausted, getting his ass handed to him by Roberts in executive sales, and the next minute I am Peter, the boy who would never grow up, endless energy, staying up all night like I did in the college days, making 60 sales calls in one day; I felt I could do anything. Hell, there were days when I felt I could fly. But there was a price—there is always a price.

The things I could tell, god, the depraved, sick things I did on fairy dust. Things that would make you question your very being. Don’t do drugs kids. I can’t say it enough: fairy dust kills. Yeah, you think you can fly, you think you are on top of the world, but you know what, death is not an awfully big adventure worth having, and that is the only kind you are going to get with the sparkly stuff.

At my lowest, I spent an entire day in hysterics, convinced my own shadow had run away and was taunting me. It sounds so stupid to say it to you now, but there I was, totally convinced I had no shadow, sitting in the middle of the road, just sobbing. I refused to go back in the house, started running around, banging on people’s doors, screaming: “Baby, come back to me, it will be different this time, I promise!” The neighbors ended up calling the cops and let me tell you, the only thing that stopped me from being dragged away was Wendy. Oh Wendy. That woman saved me, you know. She did. She took a bar of soap, and convinced me she could reattach my shadow with it. That is the kind of twisted logic that works in your mind when you are on fairy dust.

And you know what, you know what I did in return for her, for my sweet darling, my Wendy? I cheated. Sure I would tell myself I was high, it did not count, it was not really me doing it. You know what, it was me. I did it. I snorted the stardust and I cheated with a stripper who called herself Tinker Bell. Old Tink and I used to snort together, and then she got me into shooting the stuff. Every time I would try to sober up, try to break it off with Tink, she would threaten to kill herself. “I’ll die if you leave me,” that was her favorite line, and you know, I wanted to believe her, believe she would really die if I left, because where there was Tink, there was fairy dust.

I finally got clean about a year ago. I formed a support group of former addicts. We call ourselves “The Lost Boys,” because that is what we were, lost. Scared. Too afraid to grow up, to take responsibility for our actions… for our failures. There is no easy way out, kids, no magic land beyond. You have to be strong, you have to accept your limitations, and not be scared to lean on the people in your life. Getting clean was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I am proud to stand in front of you and say, it has been two years since I last used. Because in the end, kids, in the end, I learned that LIFE is an awfully big adventure worth having.